A Simple Case Of Scientific Curiosity
by Mr Sinister
Summary: Mr Sinister takes an interest in Betsy Braddock but so do the Marauders...
1. Default Chapter

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A Simple Case of Scientific Curiosity

It is before dawn on the Xavier Estate. The light filters through the curtains of the bedroom, highlighting tiny motes of dust tossed here and there by the air currents inside. Warren lies asleep beside me, snoring quietly. I don't wish to disturb him, so I gently slip out of our bed and dress myself in a pair of loose trousers and a hooded top. I think a run in the garden will do me some good, and might even put me in the mood to sleep, too, so I pull on my training shoes and sneak downstairs, careful not to make a sound. My ninja training is still imprinted on my mind, despite my reversion to this English body, so I am able to pad down the old stairs and out into the frozen garden without waking any of the others up. As I creep away from the house, their muddled, mixed-up dream-thoughts – of cardboard trees and Richard Nixon playing the tuba, in the case of Beast, or of Elle MacPherson singing opera in not-very-many-clothes, in the case of Logan – fade from my mind, and I am grateful for the peace and quiet. I run through the grounds of the mansion, through crisp, frosted grass and through groves of trees that are weighted down with powdery snow. I run until I am down at the lake, and I pause for a moment to look out across it to the horizon, my breath misting in front of me in steaming clouds. I run my gloved hands through my blonde hair and let out a little whoop of joy. I haven't felt this _good_ about myself in months. 

"I trust, Ms Braddock, that you will be slightly less exuberant for a moment while we speak?" says a voice behind me.

"Who's there?" I say as I turn, even though the voice is immediately familiar. My psychic knife flares into existence almost automatically, giving me close-range protection. In this new/old body, I can manifest both psi-bolts and the knife, making me much more formidable than I was before, in either body. Stunned, I realise that I had not sensed this man up until a moment earlier, and when I see him, I understand why. Standing before me, in his full regalia of dark blue high-collared costume, complete with cape sliced into strips, high boots and short gloves, is the man known as Nathaniel Essex, otherwise known as _Mr Sinister._ Behind him is what I assume to be the fading light of a tesseract – the mechanism that Essex uses to teleport himself from point A to point B almost instantaneously. Essex shrugs dismissively, as if that is meant to reassure me somehow.

"Oh, don't be alarmed, child. I'm not here to pursue some kind of immature vendetta against you and your… friends. This is simply a matter of scientific curiosity. Come now, Ms Braddock, haven't you the slightest desire to see how you have been changed?" He smiles, his two rows of shark-pointed teeth forming a devil's grin between his black lips. It sends a shiver down my spine.

"I can see why Scott never invites you to parties," I say, acidly. "I suggest you leave. Now. Before I wake the rest of the X-Men and you have to leave anyway."

Sinister sighs, rolling his solidly red eyes as if this is the hundredth time he has heard this kind of exchange today. "I was rather afraid you might say that." He snaps his fingers, another tesseract opens behind me, and Sinister's Marauders come pouring through like Allied troops invading the Normandy beaches. Scalphunter arrives first, followed by Blockbuster, Vertigo and Scrambler. Riptide and Arclight step through, followed by Prism and Harpoon. The massive Inuit is the last to arrive, and the tesseract closes behind him with a sound not too dissimilar to that of Kurt's teleportation. "I trust you understand the severity of the situation now, child?" he says, his voice leeched of its polite tone and edged with cold diamond. "You will come with me – _now_, this instant_ –_ or you will die."

Time for a little misdirection, I think. I raise my hands as if to indicate I'm surrendering, while at the same time projecting desperately into the minds of the X-Men. _Help me, X-Men – Marauders are on the grounds! Help me!_ As Vertigo and Arclight step forwards to grab hold of me, I extend crackling psychic knives from both my hands and stab them straight into the women's brains, shorting out their nervous systems with a single blow. _Two down, six to go…_ Blockbuster lumbers towards me, his huge hands outstretched. I simply duck them and swipe at his legs with my own, using my hand as a pivot and dropping him to the ground with a convincing thud. Before he can rise, I leap at him and thrust my knife into his skull, drawing a satisfying scream from his lips as I pull his deepest darkest fears out of his mind and into stark clarity at the edge of his consciousness. The shock of it causes his nervous system to shut down, and he lies there on the ground for a while, twitching occasionally.

A glowing harpoon thuds into the dirt by my leg. I dive clear of it instinctively and roll to my feet in front of the huge hunter. Behind me I can sense Prism. He wants to fry me in the back with a laser burst, I can sense it, but he's waiting for the right moment. _Just a little longer…_

Harpoon draws back his fist, ready to crush my skull with one blow. He wants to smear me into the dirt with the harpoon he has clutched in its massive fingers. I can sense that, too. He lets fly with the harpoon just as Prism fires his laser. All I have to do is sway aside and watch the two of them annihilate each other. As Harpoon's fist hits him, Prism's body is shattered into thousands of razor-sharp fragments that shred the other man's flesh as if it were nothing but raw offal. The big man falls, his face a bloody ruin and his body little better. 

All around me the Marauders are closing in, and I am left wondering why Scalphunter hasn't shot me in the back yet – and where the rest of my team is, for that matter. Has Scrambler somehow managed to affect my powers from a distance, without touching me? That thought chills me to the bone.

The sound of Wolverine and the rest of the team running or flying towards the lake immediately answers my doubts. None of them are in costume, but Cyclops still manages to look as commanding as ever. Sinister points at him and Riptide swirls towards him like a whirling carnival of death, those little resin stars he puts out flying everywhere. One of them grazes my leg and leaves a long, ugly cut. Cyclops fires an optic blast at him at point blank range, dropping the lithe, purple-haired mutant in an instant, his head becoming little more than a messy conglomeration of meat and bone. I feel Sinister's momentary disappointment – and, briefly, consternation – but he recovers quickly and directs Scrambler towards me. If that were not an indication of who his primary target is this day I don't know what could be. 

__

Come on, then, little man.

Come on.

Scrambler sees me aim a precise kick at his torso and shifts aside, letting the force of the blow carry me further than I was planning, but even as I move I am flipping, twisting, using my momentum to help me shift into a better position. I come to my feet again and launch the heel of my hand towards the little man's face. They are gloved, so there is no danger of skin to skin contact.

Or so I thought. 

As I find his delicate cheekbone, shattering it with a single precise blow, a patch of skin is exposed where my shirt and glove do not meet. Scrambler's fingers brush my flesh tenderly, like a lover, and my mind erupts in chaos as the world enters my skull– all at once, it seems. I can sense further away than I have ever felt before. The children playing in the streets of the Bronx seem as if they are next door. I can sense the entire city of New York – most of the state, actually – trying to invade my mind with their everyday thoughts, and the sensation is driving me closer to the edge of madness than I have ever been. I can do little else but throw my head back and claw at my face in agony, screaming wordlessly.

"Get out _get out **get out!"**_ My voice is a strangled shriek, barely audible through the tidal wave of thoughts crashing through my skull unbidden. "It hurts! Oh, God – it hurts!" Through blurry vision, I can see that the psychic feedback has knocked out my team mates – even Colossus is lying stunned on the ground. Jean is writhing in agony, clutching her skull and letting out little choked gasps, mewling like a kitten. Then, I look up through teary eyes to see Scalphunter standing over me with some kind of device attached to his skull and an odd-looking gun in his right hand.

"Say bye-bye, toots," he says emotionlessly as he raises the gun. He fires once, and my world goes dark. As I spiral down into the blackness, I hear Sinister say "Prep her for transport. I need her warm."

The first thing that comes to my muddled mind when I wake up is how antiseptic the air smells. It's like having to breathe concentrated formaldehyde. I can feel my lungs protesting with every breath that they take, but after a few moments they adjust and I am able to examine my surroundings, still a little light-headed. I am chained by my wrists to either side of a small square cell, my legs in irons and my neck circled by a steel collar that presses against my carotid. That, too, is attached by a chain to the floor of the cell, making any movement almost impossible. "Well, would you look at that – she's awake," says a voice that I recognise as Vertigo's, from off to one side. Strange – I can't sense her. The thought occurs to me that Sinister has probably injected me with some kind of inhibitor to block my access to my powers – a sort of biological circuit-breaker that makes me as human as it is possible for me to be. I look up and Vertigo smiles, her beautiful face twisted with sadistic pleasure. Her skin-tight green and white costume is reflecting the light crazily, making me feel even more ill, as I presume it's supposed to. She runs her hands through her similarly coloured hair and blows me a kiss.

"Morning, sweetheart," she says, her lips forming into a sweet little smile that I would trust more if I were not aware of how unrelentingly psychotic she and the rest of her team mates have been made to be by Sinister's persistent genetic tinkering. Of course, some of them, like Scalphunter and Blockbuster, and probably Arclight as well, didn't need that to begin with, but with sweet little Vertigo, you probably would have thought of her as a Las Vegas stripper, or a whore peddling her body in the back streets of the Big Easy before you reached her current profession of "bloodthirsty mercenary". She winks at me and continues "Sinister's going to have _such_ a wonderful time with you, sweetie. He can't wait to carve you up and see what makes you tick. We all can't. Especially Scalphunter. He _loves_ English girls. He likes the sounds they make when he cuts them. He'll make it so _good_, you'll be _begging_ him to slice you up." She smiles again, and kneels down so that she can look me in the eye. "We're _all_ looking forward to making you feel _special_, baby." She kisses me, forcing her nimble little tongue between my lips and down my throat, and making me gag. Drawing back, she licks my cheek and laughs as I spit at her, trying to get the cloyingly sweet taste of her out of my mouth. "Be seeing you soon, honey. _Real_ soon." She leaves the room, her razor-edged laughter ringing in my ears like a death knell, or a funeral dirge. 

_God help me…_

Sinister arrives soon after Vertigo has left. He is flanked by Arclight and Scalphunter, the latter clutching a pistol and toying with its barrel occasionally. Arclight eyes him contemptuously, pointing at the pistol with a finger, and sneers "You know, that's probably a case of penis envy you have there, pal." Scalphunter's expression changes in an instant from one of boredom to one of intense irritation, and he brings the gun up to within a couple of inches of her eyeball, so close that she could touch it with her eyelashes if she were to blink.

"Flinch," he says flatly. "Give me an excuse, you mouthy bitch, an' I'll spread your dumbshit brains all over the wall."

Sinister holds his hand up. "Silence. Watch your language, please, Grey Crow."

For a moment, what I could swear was fear sweeps across Scalphunter's craggy features, and he quickly puts the gun back in its holster with a meek "Yes, sir." Sinister smiles thinly and slips some surgical latex gloves over his pasty white hands.

"Thank you. And Philippa, if you ever try to goad him into that again I will strap you to a table – I don't care what kind – and I will slice you open without anaesthetic in order to examine your innards. Do you understand me?" The threat is all the more compelling since it is delivered in Essex's precise, genteel tones. Sinister is not known for raising his voice very often – and believe you me, he doesn't need to. To see Arclight shudder and cower away from her master, even when his back is turned, is to know what kind of power the man wields: Philippa Sontag can tear sheet steel in two with her bare hands, and he makes her cringe like a baby. If I hadn't been frightened before I certainly would be now. 

"Now, then," Sinister says, returning his attention to me. "Elisabeth, this will be a brief precursory examination to determine some basic variables by which we can judge your recent metamorphosis. It won't hurt unless you make it hurt. Do you understand?"

"Why are you doing this?" I say, my voice hoarse. Sinister raises a jet-black eyebrow, the blood-red diamond in the centre of his forehead warping slightly as he does so.

"My dear, you have been a side interest of mine for years. Your original metamorphosis while under the control of the Hand remains one of the most fascinating things I have seen in my years of cataloguing mutant DNA. It's my understanding that this was achieved through magic as well as science, is that correct?" That surprises me. I didn't think anybody else besides Matsu'o Tsurayaba knew, or cared, about what happened to me, other than the X-Men and my brother.

"How do you know about that?" is all I can muster my voice to say. Sinister's face breaks into another hideous smile.

"You would be surprised at what I know, Ms Braddock," he says simply. "Let's just say that I have my methods and leave it at that, shall we? One does become rather adept at gathering information when one has to collate so much of it. My boy Scott and his brood are a hard lot to keep track of without proper organisation, wouldn't you say?" He smiles again, and I feel my stomach drop down about three feet. "Now, then. Let me explain why you are here. I have plans for you, Elisabeth. Jean Grey's DNA is the best example of female mutant genes I have right at this moment – she and Scott have produced a fine heir for me – but I'm curious as to how your odd DNA might combine with Scott's. Call this a hobby of mine." He shrugs, as if explaining away a simple passion for toy trains. Holding up a small hypodermic needle, he jabs it into a vein in my arm and draws out a small amount of my blood. Handing it to Arclight, he holds up a small spatula and says, "Open your mouth, please." I keep my lips pressed together firmly, determined not to do as he asks. Small victories are the only ones I think I will be allowed while I'm here. Sinister's face falls. "Do as I say, Elisabeth, and open your mouth, or I will be forced to have Arclight and Scalphunter _make_ you open it." Resolutely, I keep my mouth closed, and Sinister sighs. "Very well. Philippa, Grey Crow – if you please." Scalphunter punches me in the stomach with a meaty fist, knocking the breath from my lungs and making me gasp involuntarily. Arclight moves in quickly and holds my mouth open so that Sinister can reach in and scrape a few cells off the inside of my cheek. When he has finished, she slaps me hard, and I feel my cheekbone shatter, splintering like balsa wood. 

"Don't ever do that again," Sinister snaps. "I have had enough of your childishness, Elisabeth. You will help me do this, or you will die. I trust that is a stark enough choice for you that you will not be so recalcitrant in future?"

Even with a broken cheekbone, I can still find the strength of will, somewhere, to whisper "Go to hell."

Sinister shrugs. "If that is how you want it. Arclight, Scalphunter, you may feed her to the others if you want. I have what I need. There are always more subjects, after all." He laughs humourlessly. "Thank you for your help, Elisabeth." He throws them the keys to my bonds, and Arclight quickly frees me, watching cruelly as I slump to the ground.

"Aww, poor Betsy fall down go boom," she says, laying sarcasm on like thick mascara. She kicks me in the ribs and I feel a couple of them snap cleanly, the sharp edges pressing into my left lung and making breathing suddenly even more painful. "How d'ya like that?" she snarls. "You're nothing but a plaything now, girlie-girl. No helpful X-punks to come save your cute little ass." She jerks me up by the hair and lets me dangle agonisingly from her fist, my legs barely touching the ground. "Here, baby. You take her." She lets go of me and I fall to the ground, feeling agonising spikes of pain shooting through my body. Scalphunter stands over my crumpled form, a cruel smile on his face.

"I suppose V told you all about what I like to do to English girls, did she?" he says, lascivious glee sounding in his voice.

"She told me… she told me enough," I manage, through the pain. "She told me… that you… were a bully and a fool." _That's it, Betsy. Make him mad. Brilliant plan._

"Well, now… you certainly got a big mouth on you, don't you?" Scalphunter pauses, sucking on his drooping moustache for a moment. "I'll give you credit, bitch. You're half right, but I ain't no fool." He holds me up by the shoulders so that I am level with his face. I can smell the stink of meat and beer on his breath and it makes me want to throw up. He lifts one corner of his mouth and I can see yellowing teeth revealed by his lips, the crooked edges lined with stains and old pieces of food. "I know when to waste a body and when not to. The boss don't care what we do to you now he has what he needs. You're gonna be a long time dying, sweetie-pie. A _long_ time dying. Oh yeah."


	2. A Simple Case Of Scientific Curiosity, P...

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A Simple Case of Scientific Curiosity

Part Two

They raped me. All of them. They raped me, and they laughed as they did it. My body is naked, bloody and torn, my soft, tender secret place ripped to shreds from their searing caresses. My face is a mess, my eyes puffy and barely open. I think my nose is broken. I'm breathing through my mouth just to be certain, because I don't want to drown in my own blood. It cakes my body like a second skin, covering the multitude of cuts and bruises that pepper my flesh. My breasts have been slashed with the edge of a switchblade and my nipples are red raw from being touched and squeezed and pinched and licked and bitten by Scalphunter and his friends. I cried a lot last night when they finally left me alone, as I whimpered softly in a cold, sticky pool of my own blood. I screamed a lot, too, when I felt my broken bones pressing into my flesh. My stomach and back ache dully from where they beat me – where they gave me bruising forget-me-nots; where they sent me love letters straight from the fist. There are long lines of crusted blood on my abdomen, too – evidence of Scalphunter and his favourite game. He cut me with a hunting knife after he, Scrambler, and Blockbuster had had their way with me – after they had pumped at my hips like animals in heat, thrusting themselves and their seed inside my body one after the other, and made me sob with desperate and futile little gasps as I tried to get away from them on broken legs. They tore at me as if I was nothing more than tissue paper to be carelessly shredded into tiny pieces. They giggled madly as I coughed blood and bile and most of what I'd eaten the day before onto the floor of their little playroom, and begged for them to stop, without any success. Arclight licked the blood from my body and crowed with glee when I screamed with pain and disgust and, perversely, _envy_ – envy that she was able to walk and talk and move without agony arcing through her body, agony that sizzled up and down my spine and through my flesh like pork fat on a griddle.

The end result of their bloody fun is that I can barely move. The chains they have slapped on my broken wrists and shattered ankles are pretty much totally redundant. I couldn't escape if I tried. The most I could manage would be a crawl – and a slow, painful crawl, at that. A sack of broken bones dragging herself to an early grave, leaving a trail of blood and tears, like a snail crawling along the edge of a straight razor. That's all I'd be. I would cut myself in two on the sharp edges of my cracked and fractured bones before I even got halfway out the door. I can barely breathe. I can barely _blink_ without making a huge effort not to cry out in pain. My sobs are quiet, coming in racked gasps, echoing back to myself and driving home just how short and painful the rest of my life is going to be. I know the others will be searching for me, but I also know that they won't find me until I am just another trophy for Scalphunter to display on his wall. 

The door in front of me opens and the man himself steps through, his long black hair tied back into a loose ponytail. "How you feeling?" he asks, as if I am simply suffering from a head cold, or something that I could recover from after a night's sleep.

"How do you… _think _I'm feeling… you bastard?" I whisper, a searing symphony of pain running through my body with every word I manage to speak, my voice almost dissolving into sobs again.

"Now, now," he says, wagging a finger at me. "Play nice, or we won't give you the present we all want to give you." That surprises me.

"…What?" I say, looking up at Scalphunter through teary, red-rimmed eyes. "What do you mean?"

"The boss agreed to let us put you in a tube for a few hours. Fix you right up." He smiles, and reaches for my face with his right hand. I draw back, fear welling up inside me. My eyes feel as wide as saucers as I retreat from his touch, my breathing fast becoming quick and panicky.

"Don't touch me," I say, my voice small, afraid – pathetic. My weakness makes me hate myself almost as much as I do them, but I can't help it. "God, _please,_ don't touch me." Scalphunter shrugs.

"Your choice, toots, but I have to carry you out of here if you want to be fixed. 'Course, if you _want_ to die looking like Quasi-fuckin'-modo because you didn't get proper medical treatment, don't blame me." That puts me in a quandary. I don't want to lose what I so recently regained, but to get it back I have to let this… man… touch my body again. In the end I simply relent and let him pick me up gently – a remarkable contrast to last night – and bring me to the central axis of this base of Sinister's. Sinister himself is busy pouring thick liquids from test tube to test tube, monitoring Bunsen burners that are cooking various samples in their own juices. He does not turn his head to acknowledge Scalphunter's entrance, nor does he say anything to either of us. Scalphunter, at least, seems unsurprised.

"Don't mind the boss," he says conversationally. "He does this a lot. He has a lot on his mind." It occurs to me that he's trying to make me feel a little better about him and what he and his companions did to me last night. In fact it almost seems as if he thinks this machine he is going to use on me will wipe away the scars on my mind as easily as it will heal my body. 

"Why are you doing this?" I whisper, as he sets me down gently inside a small pod that is edged with hardened glass and has little blinking lights dotted around its base. 

Scalphunter's true face shows itself, finally, as he grins nastily and says, "I told you you'd be a long time dying, toots. This way we get to play with you a while longer. Ain't life grand?" He slips an oxygen mask over my head and waves to me as the tube begins to fill with a translucent green liquid that smells like peppermint and has the consistency of thick jelly. It pumps upwards from vents in the floor until it has filled the tube almost to the top, supporting my useless legs with its buoyant texture and taking away the pain that had wracked my body for what had seemed like an eternity. I float there for awhile, my view of the world coloured a viscous green and blurred by the refractive properties of the material of the tube itself. I can see the other Marauders milling around aimlessly, some of them playing video games and others practising with their powers. In the tubes next to me are what I presume are clones of Harpoon and Prism, the two Marauders I killed (or who killed each other – I haven't quite made up my mind who's responsible for that yet, and I think it's a fairly redundant question now that they are alive again) during my capture at the mansion. Riptide is there as well, his purple-haired face seemingly at peace – for this brief period, at least. He'll soon be back to his murderous best, as will the others. Then, right in front of me, I see Vertigo sauntering towards me, swinging her hips in the same way she did before she and Arclight tore at my flesh last night. She smiles and kisses the glass of my prison with her green-painted lips, waving silently at me in a bashful sort of way with the fingers of her left hand, as if to tell me that she intends to do exactly the same as she did before once I am fully healed. She licks her lips and saunters away, secure in the knowledge that she has passed her message on. 

It takes about a day or so for the thick green solution to seep in through my pores and set my bones as though they had never been broken. My muscles still ache, and my mind is still scarred, but I am whole again, at least where my skeleton is concerned. I am able to see without squinting through bruised eyelids and I can move around a little, as well, which is good. It might leave me able to find a way out of here. My powers are still dampened, of course, but that doesn't mean that I can't think of something. I've relied too much on my mutant powers recently – they have a way of making you view the world in a specific way, and without them, that view is turned on its head. When I'm headblind like this (which has happened before, but thankfully not that often) I feel as if an essential part of me has been torn away, but I try hard not to let that colour my overall view of the situation. Scott would never do that, and since he is the team's leader I try to follow his example. If I can be half the X-Man he is, I'll have done a good job.

Scott. Just to think that name breaks my heart. Not because I love him – though I once thought I did, what seems like an eternity ago, thanks to Kwannon – but because he is being used by Sinister yet again, although in a less direct fashion than myself. To know you're being treated as a living, breathing petri dish every day of your life must be a huge burden to bear. 

Scalphunter carried me out of the chamber himself in a repeat performance of yesterday's little humanitarian gesture, my body still naked and tender, and now he arrives back in my cell, his face split into a nasty grin. "Come on, bitch," he says coldly. "Time for you to give us all some _sugar_." He laughs nastily and cups my chin in his hand, resting the blade of his knife against my jaw as I try desperately to get away from him, drawing back as much as I can. I can feel him tracing it up and down my jugular and drawing it gently across my throat, as if he wants to slit my neck open there and then. "You know," he says thoughtfully, "I always thought you were shit-hot, even before you got that Asian stripper's body. You know, in a prim and proper English kind of way. The times I jacked off to thoughts of you… man, too many to count." He snorts with laughter again, as if he has just told me some hilarious joke. "And you know what? The reality's even better than I thought it would be." His face twists until it resembles a demon's. "Much better." He reaches up and undoes the restraints at my wrists that keep me strung up as if I have been crucified. He strokes his fingers across my breasts before he does so, however, making me shudder involuntarily. "Don't touch me," I say, in a voice that indicates I know I have little choice in the matter.

"Or what? You'll use some of that ninja bullshit on me?" Scalphunter strikes a clumsy defensive pose, and then laughs crudely. "Please. Give me a choice between using that and a bullet and I'll take the bullet any day. Any day, anywhere, any fuckin' time." He strokes my face again, and pushes me back against the wall, drawing his body close to mine. For a moment I am afraid that he is going to begin the evening's torture right here – I can feel his erection pressing into me through his costume, thick and hard against my hip – but then he smiles his nasty smile and whispers "Time's up, bitch. Let's go." He grabs my hair and moves quickly out of the room. I stumble after him, unable to really get any sort of balance – which, I think, is what he wanted. For all his bravado, I think – I _know_ – that he would be my inferior in hand to hand combat. If only I could get the chance to prove it, I would show him exactly how much of a man he really is. How scared and afraid he would be without a weapon to protect him. 

He drags me like an animal towards the Marauders' rec. room – they obviously want to be able to drink their beer and smoke their cigars while I bleed and cry and thrash like a fish on a hook. Vertigo, Arclight and Harpoon are in there already, their faces lighting up when they see Scalphunter entering with me in tow. Vertigo and Arclight are playing a card game – I think Sontag is trying to teach Vertigo how to play poker, without much success – and Harpoon is playing pool by himself, sending little pulses of energy along the cue now and again, in order to give the cue ball an extra kick. I know how that energy feels – the bastard touched me and sent it through my body over and over again. He made me lose control of my body's most basic functions – I was covered in my own excrement because my bowels emptied themselves at his touch. As if I hadn't been humiliated enough. 

Harpoon puts the cue down and strides over towards me, a sick grin on his face. "Hey there," he says in his deep, melodious voice that might have sung songs in another life – beautiful songs, songs that Warren and I could have made love to – but now simply makes me feel ill at its very sound. He reaches out with his fingers and strokes my cheek, tracing the line of my neck down past the curves of my breasts to my stomach, and towards my sex. I know he's going to shock me with that energy of his, and I know that it's going to be painful, so when he brushes his fingertips lightly against my centre and the pain burns up my spine, I do not scream. Not immediately, anyway. 

That comes later.

The days blur into one another, until I have been here for more than a week. Or at least I'd assume that they do. I haven't been outside since I got here, so I have no idea about the passage of time. My lungs have breathed nothing but sterile laboratory air and my feet have felt nothing underneath them but cold metal and plastic tiling. Every so often the Marauders will leave Sinister's base and come back with gruesome little trophies of where they have been – Scalphunter proudly shows me the hide of a mutant from the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, who he said could transform wood into metal, and back again. He doesn't tell me why Sinister wanted him dead, only that this poor little mutant (and they _were_ little. From what I could see they weren't more than four, maybe five feet tall. Probably smaller) wasn't "good enough" to be allowed to pass their genes on to the next generation. This is Sinister's idea of "pruning" the genetic tree that is humanity – murder and genocide are his stock in trade. 

And all through this, the Marauders have their brutal way with me almost every single night. My body aches with the pain of a thousand beatings and twice as many cuts and bruises, my mind coming close to snapping more than once. I keep telling myself that the others are just about to break down the doors of this fortress and rescue me, but I know that's a lie, even as I say the words. Knowing Sinister, this place is probably heavily shielded against telepathic scans – even those of Professor Xavier's strength – and without my own telepathy, I have no way of letting Warren know where I am. I hope that they are able to find the Marauders on one of their dirty little excursions, stop them, and then follow them back here, but the Marauders are professionals. They're not likely to let themselves be tailed so easily. Right now, though, it's my only hope for help from the outside. I have to do something myself if I am to escape, I decide. 

My opportunity comes a few days later, when Vertigo sashays her way into my cell. She and the other Marauders have started taking turns to drag me to wherever it is they want to tear me apart on that particular night. The night before last it was Arclight. Before that, Scrambler. Before that… I can't remember. They've all begun to look the same to me. Suffice to say Scalphunter obviously got bored with herding me towards the others and ordered the rest of them to pull their weight.

"Hi, sexy," Vertigo purrs, fluttering her eyelashes at me. "Pleased to see me?"

I'm too miserable and tired to answer with anything but a shake of my head. Vertigo's smile widens.

"Never mind," she says in her smoky whore's voice, her face splitting into a malevolent grin. "I just _love_ seeing you, baby." She laughs coldly, kisses me roughly on the lips, and runs her hands through my hair, which has become sticky with old blood and dirt. She ignores my reflexive attempts to pull away from her and presses a finger to the centre of my forehead, using her power to upset the balance of the fluid in my inner ears so that I am disoriented and nauseous while she undoes my restraints. She might have been forcefully evolved from a Savage Land primate, but Vertigo does show a remarkable amount of sense when she needs to. When I am free, she helps me to stand and then slaps some heavy restraints on my wrists. Unlike Scalphunter and Arclight, she has no formal combat training besides that which Sinister programmed into her head, so she obviously feels a lot more comfortable knowing that I won't be able to hit her.

_Enjoy it while it lasts, you bitch._

I walk behind her for a while, my body prickling with goose pimples as I feel the cold air currents of the corridor against my skin. I wait until Vertigo has become certain that I will be docile – which I can tell through her body language; the way that her shoulders relax, how she carries herself, that kind of thing – and then I aim the heavy cuffs at the back of her head, so quickly that she cannot avoid them. They hit with a heavy thud, and Vertigo falls with little more than a sigh. I am tempted to revisit my suffering on her while she is unconscious – to make her virtually crippled with pain, doubled over in agony that reflects back upon her body like an echo – but my better instincts win out.

Just.

I search her body for the key to the cuffs, and, holding it in my teeth, I unlock them and feel them fall to the ground heavily. I strip Vertigo down to her skin, taking her costume because it is the only item of clothing I have to hand right now, and I would imagine that she has been naked in the place more than once. It's a bit too tight at the waist, and a little short in the arms and legs, but its fabric will soon stretch to accommodate me, I'm sure. Before I go, I make one small concession to the feelings of wanting to exact vengeance that have bubbled in my skull since that horrible first night here, and kick Vertigo in the ribs, as hard as I can. Something gives way beneath my foot, and I feel vindicated, ever so slightly. I spit on her prone body and leave her lying naked in the corridor. 

Time to find my way out of here, I think. From my nightly excursions through the base I have been able to form a more-or-less complete mental map of the layout of the place. The central hub has access routes to every major part of Sinister's lair – I have seen genetic repositories, cloning banks and storage facilities while I've been being dragged around. I made a point to memorise everything – one of the latent benefits of my mutant power is that I can recall pretty much everything I see with crystal clarity. I'm sure Jean would say the same. If I've remembered correctly, the way towards the main exit should be to the east.

I proceed that way, in the absence of any other plan, and I find to my delight, that I am correct. I can see the night sky outside, and it fills my heart with joy. I'm cold, I'm hungry, and I'm drained both mentally and physically, but I'm going to finally get _out_ of here. I reach my hand out to stroke the door release button, when I hear a voice that makes my heart sink and my soul curl in on itself.

"Do you think, Elisabeth Braddock, that you would be here now unless I had allowed you to be?" Sinister says, a fine edge of contempt gilding his words. "This is my world, you foolish child. I have watched you from the moment you escaped Vertigo. She is an idiot – a diversionary tactic made flesh – but she has served her master well since I made her a Marauder. As Rebecca will." I turn, finally, and I see a young woman standing next to Sinister, her blonde hair falling about her shoulders in long waves, and her eyes filled with the same icy determination and amoral gleam as Sinister's are. She is clad in a skin-tight blue uniform that accentuates her body's curves and is decorated with long black zigzags which follow her long legs and arms, going right up to the tips of her fingers. Her eyes are a vivid red, like Scott's. Sinister smiles his awful smile again and spreads his hands wide. "Elisabeth, meet my newest Marauder. Her name is Mindwipe, and she's your daughter."


	3. A Simple Case of Scientific Curiosity, P...

**__**

A Simple Case of Scientific Curiosity

Part Three

"Kill her."

With those two words, Nathaniel Essex sets my own daughter on me as if she is nothing more than a rabid dog. Mindwipe, as he has dubbed her, is fast – maybe faster than I would be, if I were in peak physical condition, and certainly faster than I am now. Half starved, sick with fatigue, and as mentally and physically shattered as I am, I don't think I can manage to keep up any sort of pace for long. Unfortunately, my daughter seems unwilling to let up. She aims a blow with the heel of her hand at my neck, and I am barely able to drag my body aside in order to grab her wrist and aim an elbow at her collarbone, searching for the nerve centre that will render her left arm useless if it is hit correctly. She twists like a cat, and the blow is deflected off bone, sending jarring waves of pain up my arm and robbing me of feeling in my fingers for a few moments.

"Too slow, Mother," Mindwipe says, backhanding me across the face with the knuckles of her right hand. I stagger for a second, feeling blood spray from my nostrils in looping arcs and I cough messily, spitting more of the metallic-tasting liquid from my split lips out onto the floor. I have to admit, my daughter's good.

Too good.

So good, in fact, that it takes a moment of getting my thoughts together to realise what she called me.

"What did you say?" I say, as she hurls herself towards me again, with redoubled effort. Her red eyes burn with a ferocious desire. If my telepathy were active, I suspect I would be feeling it burning like a magnesium flare at the edge of my mind round about now. She smiles as I parry her fist, her icy grin filling me with stone-cold dread.

"You're my mother," she says, shrugging and tapping the side of her skull with a fingertip, her voice flat as she swings her foot around in a tight arc, barely missing my face. "Physically, at least. I don't see any point in calling you anything else. And before you ask, I know who my father is, too – my master told me everything I needed to know about you X-Men."

_Her master._ Sinister has her completely in his thrall, and she _likes_ it. "What have you done to her, Essex?" I shout, as I fend off a brutal savate kick from Rebecca, feeling the pain from doing so jarring through my forearm. 

"Done?" he says with a sneer. "You ascribe too much to me, my dear. I've done nothing at all, except take your unused potential and put it to good use. Isn't that right, Rebecca?" I look into my daughter's eyes and I can see that she is in total agreement, a sadistic smile flowering on her beautiful face.

"Yes," she says simply, confirming my initial judgement. Her crimson eyes glow brightly for a moment, and an optic blast burns out from them, pounding into the ground near my feet. I have barely enough time to throw myself aside and roll back up into a fighting crouch. I can feel a twinge in my back where Scalphunter broke a few ribs a couple of days before, and it gives me pause – time enough for Mindwipe to capitalise on my distraction and hit me again, connecting her foot brutally with a tender spot on my right shoulder. I scream as old aches are brought to the surface, flesh straining against bone angrily, and I sprawl to the ground hard, my shoulder shrieking with pain as it hits the floor awkwardly. I can see Rebecca launching herself into the air out of the corner of my eye, and it is all I can do to avoid her as she brings the heel of her right hand down hard into the ground, crumpling the plastic tiling with the force of the impact. She screams in frustration and rage and leaps quickly to her feet again, her blonde hair cascading around her face and framing the predatory look in her crimson eyes ominously.

"Stop running, Mother," she says evenly. "You're only making this harder on yourself." A crackling red version of my psychic knife extends itself from her right hand. "Don't make me use this." I wouldn't be worried normally – experience has taught me that mutants are generally immune to their children's powers – but this time I can't be sure, especially where Sinister is concerned. The way he constructed Rebecca, he probably altered her genetic structure enough to make her deadly to anybody, even her own genetic donors. This is probably Sinister's ultimate thank you to me – killed by my own child after servicing his Marauders like a cheap junkie-whore. Nobody said he had to make it a _good_ thank you, after all.

One thing is for certain, though – I won't get anywhere here in this cramped corridor. I have to take the fight outside if I'm going to live. I need the space to put my experience into play, because going on raw energy and ability alone, I know Rebecca has the edge with her youth and programmed fighting skills. These cramped conditions will only favour her over the course of this unfortunate little conflict. Scrambling as quickly as I can towards the door, I manage to punch the release button, causing the door to hiss upwards and let in a cold blast of outside air. I can feel my body prickling at the sensation of wind on my skin, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and my skin breaking out into goose pimples. From our surroundings I can see that we are somewhere in the Bronx, which makes sense, I suppose. From here, Sinister can keep a relatively close eye on his favourite pet while sending his Marauders all over the globe with his tesseracts. The area he has chosen is just run down enough not to arouse suspicion from those people Sinister would very much like to keep out of his way – it provides extremely good cover for a base with technology as advanced as Sinister's, since it is probably the last place anyone would think of looking.

Hide in plain sight.

A motto to live by, in Sinister's case. 

Rebecca is not far behind me, her optic blasts burning into the ground and leaving steaming puddles of variously liquefied, cracked and broken paving slabs, and I can see that she is completely unfamiliar with her surroundings, despite her programmed knowledge. Good. That, at least, gives me something to work with. I'm tired of being the underdog. There is another benefit to this, though – being out in the open ought to give me more of a chance at being found by telepathic scans and Cerebro sweeps. All I have to do is stay alive long enough for the team to find me. Entirely more easily said than done, I realise bitterly, as Rebecca swings a roundhouse kick so dizzyingly close to my cheek that I can feel the movement of the air around it. She leaves herself open for a fraction of a second as she comes back to a stable footing, and I take advantage of that. I have to. My fist cannons into her stomach, knocking the breath from her lungs and making her stagger for a second. Following my initial blow up with a hard left cross, I upset her equilibrium even further, and I can see a nasty beetroot-coloured bruise already beginning to flower on Rebecca's cheek. Finally, I connect the toes of my right foot with her chin, causing her to flip clumsily over and crash to the ground, skidding through some old rubbish that litters the street, a long smudge of dirt staining her cheek as she fixes her gaze on me, an unholy anger in her eyes, her teeth bared in a furious snarl. Evidently she is of the opinion that she should be the one winning this particular conflict. She rises to a crouch, never taking her eyes off me, and then she springs, like a cat pouncing on an unsuspecting mouse. She barrels into me, but I am ready for her, falling backwards as she approaches and slamming a foot into her midriff. Using her own momentum against her, I am able to hurl her to the ground again, headfirst. Rebecca growls deep in her throat and her eyes glow red again. I can see the optic blast coming, but this time I can't avoid it quickly enough. It impacts below my ribs, and the pain is incredible. There is no real heat to speak of, but the force of the blast is enough to knock the wind out of me completely. Rebecca keeps the beam flowing, and I can feel my flesh beginning to be pulverised beneath it as the air is quickly sucked out of my lungs – my guts are being crushed between the force of the blast and the ground, and they are on the verge of liquefying, I can feel it. I have to do something, or I'm going to be coughing my own intestines up before long. I can feel some dust beneath my right hand, so I make a fist and trap as much of it as I can, and I hurl it towards Rebecca's eyes. She shifts focus to vaporise the dust, giving me just enough time to drag myself back to a standing position. I feel sick as a dog, but I'm alive, which is the most important thing.

_Betsy, can you hear me? It's Jean. We're on our way. Hang on!_ Thank God. I regret that I can't send back a reply yet, but at least I know that help is coming. Now all I have to do is stay alive long enough for it to be of any use. That objective suddenly seems a lot more difficult when I see Sinister quietly making his way out of his base and into the chill night air. He doesn't move any further than the mouth of the doorway, but the delay suggests he has summoned the rest of the Marauders as back up for Mindwipe. I have to slow down my daughter before she breaks down my defences and makes me easy meat for the rest of her team-mates, and I think I have the perfect way. Psychological warfare can cut both ways, after all.

As Rebecca launches herself towards me again, I find voice inside of me to say "After you kill me, what then?" Rebecca smiles cruelly and aims a swift left jab at my face, which I am easily able to parry with a forearm.

"Simple, Mother," she purrs. "I do whatever Sinister _tells_ me to do. I _belong_ to him."

_Perfect._ "And what happens when he decides that he doesn't want you around any more? What then?"

She sneers at me. "You're pathetic. He wouldn't have grown me if he didn't think I was useful. I have all of his stored knowledge in my head – I know how he works. I know him better than you ever will, and I know that I'm indispensable."

Sinister laughs suddenly. "Ah, the idealism of youth. I remember it well. Rest assured, child, the world is not so cut and dried. The rest of my Marauders have accepted this, and you will too, after I have downloaded your mind into your fourth or fifth clone body. I believe you said it best yourself – you belong to me, and I will use you as I see fit. If that means discarding you like an evolutionary dead end, so be it. Pray that you keep me pleased. Now do as I have asked you, and _kill her._" His voice is filled with a deadly irritation that suggests if she hesitates once more, he will follow through on his promise. I can see indecision flicker briefly on Rebecca's face before she turns back towards me fully, her eyes cold and flinty. She's made her choice. I have to make mine, too.

It's at that moment that the Blackbird drowns out any other noise with the roar of its engines. The powerful downdrafts scatter loose rubbish and tip dustbins over with their sheer energy. The door in the belly of the craft opens and the X-Men who can fly quickly help the others who have no such ability to get down to the ground. Sinister looks upwards and rolls his eyes despairingly, raising his arms and firing a few bursts of the peculiar energy he is able to project from his hands. It sizzles through the air, almost striking Rogue and Storm and singeing a few of Warren's feathers as he carries Wolverine down towards the ground.

_Warren._ I can feel him in my head now, even the psionic inhibitor in my bloodstream not impeding our psychic rapport. The sensation is beautiful – the first beautiful thing I have experienced in too long a time – but I don't have the time to dwell on it for the moment. Rebecca has recovered from her momentary shock and is surging forward like an angry tide. Her advance is cut off by another optic blast that hits her squarely in the chest. I look around to see Cyclops standing with his legs braced so as to provide a steady platform to fire from. He smiles at me and offers me his hand. "Come on, Betts," he says in his strong, confident voice. "We're leaving."

I point to the fallen Rebecca, who is struggling to rise, her limbs twitching in shock. "We have to take her with us," I say breathlessly. "We can't leave her here. She's my daughter." That makes Cyclops' usual confident, stoic demeanour slip a second.

"Your… what?" he says, a little nonplussed. I shake my head, exasperated. 

"It doesn't matter. We can't just leave her here for Sinister to experiment on. I'm going to get her." I run quickly over to where Rebecca is lying prone and I sling her over my shoulder in a fireman's lift. I can feel my weakened knees singing with the strain but I can't leave my child here, no matter how she was conceived. I can't. Cyclops takes her from me when she starts struggling, administering a field sedative from one of the pouches on his bandoleer to keep her still. He holds me up when I stagger, until he sees the Marauders swarming from the entranceway to Sinister's base. He motions to Warren to take Rebecca and me back up to the Blackbird, and I gladly take Warren's hands when he flies down. In the Blackbird, Hank is waiting with a blanket, which he slips around my shoulders as Warren lays Rebecca down in the Blackbird's small medical facility.

It's round about then that the walls I have jury-rigged for myself finally come crashing down, like those of Jericho at the sound of the Israelites' trumpets. I don't stop crying until we have got back to the Xavier Institute. Sleep comes in the midst of fitful sobs, when it comes at all.

In the morning, Warren comes to see me in the infirmary, bearing a bowl of hot porridge and a spoon on a wooden tray. "Hi," he says. "Hank said you were up, so I thought I'd bring you some breakfast." I do my best to smile, but from the expression on Warren's face, and the way his thoughts shift in mood, I can sense that I don't quite manage it. He sits down next to me, as if he's unsure of what to say. "You know I'm here for you, Betts," he says, finally. "If you want to talk, or –"

"Talk?" I snap suddenly, my voice colder than I'd wanted. "_Talk?_ You think that you can help me just by _talking_? Do you _honestly_ think this is going to get better through me sitting around in a circle of chairs and 'sharing my feelings'? I was _raped_, Warren. I was _raped._ I can't ever forget that. You might think all your cosy little support groups and wishy-washy damned psychobabble can help me, but they _can't. _Do you know what it was like? Have you the _slightest_ idea of what it is to be violated like that? Have you ever felt that kind of terror? That kind of _shame?_ No, I don't think you have. So don't try and patronise me by saying we can make this all better with the verbal equivalent of a Band-Aid and a cup of _coffee_. I hoped you thought more of me than to do that." I can feel my eyes burning again, and I put a hand to the inner corners of my eyes, feeling the tears squeezing themselves out and dripping off my face. "I'm sorry, Warren. I didn't mean to go at you like that. I just… I just felt so _helpless_ while I was there. I couldn't do anything but wait to die. I hate them." My voice shrinks to a hoarse whisper – a stark contrast to a few moments earlier. "I hate them." Warren reaches out with his hand to stroke my hair, and I reflexively jerk my head away. I can't help it, and I can feel my heart crack even more as I do so. "Do you see what they've done to me, Warren? I can't even stand to be _touched _any more." Warren sits back down and folds his hands in his lap, a look of stark disbelief on his beautiful features. 

"God…" He runs his hands through his blonde hair. "I'm so sorry, Betsy."

"Don't be. You didn't do what they did. It's not your fault." I pause for a moment as the horrible memory of what happened comes bubbling to the surface of my mind like some thick, evil-smelling liquid spewing from the bowels of the Earth. "Oh, Warren… I don't know what I'm going to do. Every time I close my eyes, I can hear them laughing at me. I can still feel Blockbuster crushing my hand just because he wanted to hear the bones break. I can still smell the sweat on their bodies. Everything reminds me of what they did. They took my _life_ away from me, Warren!"

"But they didn't take _me_ away from you, Betsy," Warren says quietly, but with a slight tone of determination audible in his words. "If I can help you, then I'll help you, I promise. The last thing I want to do is abandon you – not when you need me the most. You deserve more than that." He intertwines his hand with mine, and despite the discomfort the sensation of another person's flesh against mine brings, I squeeze it hard, as if it is the only thing that will keep my heart pumping blood around my body. 

"Thank you," I say, simply.

"You mean the world to me, Betsy," he replies, softly. "More than the world. We'll take this one day at a time, all right? All I want to see is you get better, and I know the others do too. Scott, Jean, Hank, Bobby – all the team – they told me to tell you they send their best wishes." He smiles. "They love you, Betsy. I love you. We want you to get well again – whatever you need us to do, we'll do."

"I don't want to be coddled, Warren," I say, firmly. "I'm not an invalid. The offer is nice, though. Tell them I appreciate it." Warren nods.

"I'll do that. Scott and Jean thought you might appreciate this, too." He reaches into a pocket of his jacket and fishes out a small book. When he hands it to me, I can see that it is a Bible, the pages edged with gold and the cover bound with new leather.

"I didn't know Scott and Jean were religious."

"They aren't particularly, no. But they do go to church occasionally, and Scott tells me that he finds a lot of comfort in some of the passages of the Gospels. He marked them for you, if you ever want to take a look." He opens the little book out and shows me where some of the verses have been lightly highlighted with small, darting strokes of red pen. "With all that Jean's been through, it does seem kind of appropriate, don't you think?" I have to admit that he has a point. Phoenix force or not, Jean's return from the dead alone should be regarded as miraculous. 

"It's a nice gift," I say, and I mean it. "Will you tell him I say thank you?"

"Of course I will." He pauses. "Wait – you're a telepath. You can do it from here if you want to. Why are you using me as a gofer?"

"I'm not up to using my psi-powers yet. Maybe in a few days when I get my strength back, but for now I have to do this the old-fashioned way." Warren nods in understanding.

"I see. Now I understand." He shrugs. "Guess I'll have to get used to it, then."

I glance at the clock on the wall, and I can see that it is nearly ten o'clock. "Shouldn't you have gone to your office by now?" I say, curiously. Warren grins.

"I took the week off," he tells me with an airy shrug. "One of the benefits of being CEO. So you're stuck with me for a while, I'm afraid."

"Good. I think I need the company."

"I know. And that's why I did it." He inclines his head towards the other bay in the infirmary, where my daughter is lying sedated, with a ruby-quartz visor preventing her from using her optic blasts, and a small dose of neural inhibitor stopping her from accessing her telepathic powers. I think Hank wanted to take no chances around her, and I don't blame him. My daughter is as deadly as the rest of Sinister's Marauders, and at the moment we have no way of knowing whether she'll turn on us or not. Not to mention whether she might have had safeguards built into her brain in case she ever turned against Essex, safeguards that could kill her quickly and painfully. "I want to use that time to get to know your daughter, too. Hank told me who and what she is while you were sleeping – I hope I can be a good father to her. I just never imagined being a father this young, or to the artificially created daughter of my wife and my best friend." He laughs – a small, pained chuckle that has no real humour behind it. "Even by our standards, that's pretty strange, don't you think?"

"Business as usual, by our standards, I think," I reply bitterly. "At least Rebecca isn't infected with a techno-organic virus like Nathan." My smile is weak. "I take my comfort where I can, Warren." He nods ruefully.

"Yeah. I guess so. I just wish you didn't have to, that's all."

"Me too, Warren. Me too."


End file.
